Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix review (X360)

Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t get Harry Potter, I just can’t see the appeal of some speccy kid prancing around with a magic wand. But the kids love him for some reason, and that in itself is a license to print money. J K Rowling is set up for life, along with any children and grandchildren she might have, Warner Brothers has also got itself a large slice of the pie too, and where there’s a big name movie there’s a game too. This is where Electronic Arts grabs itself a slice of the action with yet another one of its movie cash ins, will it keep the millions of Potter fans happy, and more importantly is it a decent game in it’s own right?

Potty about Potter?

Well regardless of the quality of the game it’s almost a dead cert that the game is going to please the hordes of fans. A lot of effort has been put in to make the game as authentic as possible to its source material, voice talent from the films stars, their bodies digitally modelled very realistically, and absolutely loads of unlock able videos. But then again, attention to detail is EAs strong point, but it’s also one of its major failings, they make a game look appealing to its target audience, but it’s often at the expense of more important aspects, and this is no exception. For all the effort put in to the presentation there are still some small niggles, whilst the characters look and sound almost exactly like their movie counterparts when they speak it’s just not quite right, the lips move in time to the words, but there is little to no facial expression.

No matter how well Hogwarts has been recreated it just doesn’t feel real, the talking portraits are pretty poorly animated, the moving staircases seem to have a mind of their own half the time and become a hindrance rather than a help. Then there’s all the random schoolkids that have been cloned to populate the school, I appreciate their aren’t enough characters in the books and films to fill a place as big as Hogwarts, but they could have spread them about more evenly, sometimes you won’t see any for a while and other times the corridors will be crowded with them And let’s not get in to how repetitive the abuse they throw at poor little Harry is, is he really that hated at Hogwarts, I always thought he was the most popular kid in school. Anyhow, these small niggles are bound to be overlooked by the fans, as are the games other shortcomings, but for the rest of us there’s a fair bit at fault here.

Muggles beware

The main problem with the game is that there’s not very much to it, that’s not to say there’s not a lot to do, but it’s all a bit samey and the amount of back tracking you’ll do is also very tedious, even when you find some of the schools shortcuts. There’s plenty of quests to complete in the game, but the majority of them just involve collecting an item and returning it to its owner, and most of the others involve using your magic to move things around, it gets boring pretty quickly. On top of the games main quests that must be done to complete the game there are side quests in the form of homework from teachers, but again these are all along the same sort of lines, either collect a book to write an essay or practice magic in front of the teacher.

That’s not the end of things to do though, you’ll also find a few minigames littered around, but these are nothing you haven’t seen before, magical versions of chess, go fish and shove ha’penny, nothing worth writing home about. And if all that isn’t tedious enough for you the castle is filled with little things you can do to earn experience points, repairing statues, straightening up suits of armour, lighting torches, that sort of thing. With these experience points you might think you’re playing an RPG, but although whenever you reach a certain amount of points and it does tell you your magical powers have increased it doesn’t seem to make any difference at all. Also there’s very little combat for what is supposedly an RPG, with less than ten real fights throughout the game, I know they have to stick to the films plot, but they could have thrown in some smaller fights to liven things up a bit.

Wave that Wand

It’s not all bad though, the game does have one redeeming feature, the actual use of your magic, which is done very intuitively with the right analogue stick of the controller. Spells are cast by waving your wand in a particular pattern just move the analogue stick in the same pattern and your wand follows on screen. This works extremely well earlier in the game when you don’t have too many spells to remember, but as you progress though you learn more and more spells.

It’s not so much of a problem when all you have to do are the menial tasks that make up the games quests but when you get in to a combat situation with a dozen spells at your disposal it not only gets a little confusing, but it’s also far too easy to cast the wrong spell. It’s a real shame that they couldn’t find a way of fitting more spells in without it getting too confusing as it’s the one aspect of the game that really stands out above the tedium of the games quests and is genuinely fun. Something for EA to think about for the next Harry Potter game, because it’s highly unlikely they’ll do anything about the generic and boring gameplay that make up the rest of the game.

For Fans Only

If you’re looking for an action/adventure game for your Xbox 360, which is what this is despite the pretense of an RPG, then there are a lot better ones available than this. But, if you can’t get enough of Harry Potter then this could well be just what you’re looking for, it all depends, do you love Harry Potter more than you love video games? If the answer is yes you’ll forgive it it’s many faults, but if not then it’s inadvisable to buy what is a decidedly average game with a movie license stamped all over it.